Grab her
The first time I kissed a boy, it was definitely on a dare, although I liked him. I spent the night at my friend Lacey’s house. She lived in the same mobile home community as the boy, and we walked over to his place and tapped on his bedroom window. She dared us to kiss, we did, and it was sloppy and salty and strange, which is the way of first kisses. I was 13. I wondered if he liked me, too. I’m still not sure. We never kissed again, but another night he chased me around the property and I was a little scared of what would happen if he caught me. But I was faster.
The first time I told a boy I loved him, I was 17. He was mean to me, this boy. He had started out sweet but slowly devolved. We had dated on and off all throughout high school, and each time we were on he got meaner. We dated for all of senior year. I told him I loved him. He called me a dumbass. He ordered me to fetch him things, cheated openly, told me I would look better with breast implants. Once when I was sitting down he saw a pocket of cellulite on my thigh and stared at me in disgust, asked what it was. One of the great embarrassments of my life is that I stayed for as long as I did. But that is what happens when you’re young and insecure and beaten down by how little other people think of you. I stayed until I didn’t, until I disowned him and most of the people who came with him. Really, though, I was forced to leave.
The first time I had a job, I worked in it for two years before realizing my 60-year-old male boss was not just eccentric but a creep—that he sometimes drove past my apartment at night and noted whose cars were and weren’t parked out front, that he became angry if I didn’t want to talk to him about my dating life, that he liked talking to me and another female coworker about his past sexual exploits. I quit and he came by my new place of work with a box of gardenia-scented candles and a poem. He mailed me a letter every day. He called and left messages. I finally told my parents, and my father and uncle paid him a visit and explained what would happen if he ever came into contact with me again. Then, he listened. I was 18.
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